Before we derail a million more threads ...

I want the scout to be able to choose between a shotgun (or some other kind of effective close range weapon) or a semi-auto scoped rifle.

 

I was thinking of making a shitty suggestion in a couple of days..

But, how about turning the scout into a real good close combat attacker? The one you bring with you in apc rushes. He would really excell at close combat and perhaps have something that helps him at medium range.

Weapons:
Pistol and sword for NF! Pistol and Knife for BE!
Shotgun
Stun stickies or anti tank stickies? Hell do I know
Some lulzy other things. + Those spam I want arty here, nothing happens things.

 

i dont think abolishing the scout is the answer

its an answer, and would fix a lot of things, but there are better alternatives

 

i am willing to brainstorm and debate over steam with you about this subject tomorrow brutos

id hate it if the infantry gameplay ended up being less diverse then before

 

If this hasn't derailed by page 10, I might consider joining in.

 

Should be a close combat sab your racks,punch your dome in type of guy

Give him innate hide thx

 

Without modeling/coding support, nothing significant is going to change.

As long as we are operating under this assumption, we need to make the parts about the scout unique more powerful in order to justify his existence, which is the following list:

scout rifle
sabotage
grenade selection
binoculars
various skills

I'm not going to leave any suggestions here, I will only say what is not going to work. Leaving a broken weapon in the game is retarded. Sabotage in its current incarnation is not fun for anyone. Concussions have potential with changes, sticky stuns are pretty good, and smokes need to be removed from the game. Binoculars, well... yeah. The other skills are not nearly as useful as some skills that other classes have. The quintessential "scout skill," melee upgrade, can be used by any class effectively, and quite frankly, melee is just too broken to actually use in any competitive, consistent fashion. Unless melee is fixed it will always be relegated into a joke skill for use on district.

The conversation about the scout being some badass close combat class with a shotgun is not going to happen as long as the scout has hide. What is more likely is that you're going to have campers that wait for you to run by and then blast you with the shotgun for an easy kill. Only 10% of the empires community can handle close combat in the capacity that everyone talks about, where you're a rambo badass, jumping over walls and blasting people in extreme close combat. It is extremely unrealistic to assume that changing the scout will make annoying players less annoying. People who are drawn to camping are not going to suddenly change their behavior, they're going to find a combination of weapons and skills that work well for their tendency to camp. Right now they have the choice between the retarded HMG and the scout rifle. IMO thank god more of them don't find the HMG. Anyway, adding the shotgun with hide is just going to add another way for annoying players to be annoying.

Assuming I had 100% control over the scout and had unlimited resources of modeling, etc. I could make him into a total badass that every team would regret not having a few elite players playing as this class. This is simply not realistic. We've been waiting for years for changes to the scout, and we've dealt with a miserably nerfed and exploitable unique weapon and a sabotage that has massively fluctuated in power over the last few versions. Something has to change soon or the future of the scout is doomed. We need to work with what we have now because we're not going to get all of the shit that we keep asking for.

 

I couldn't agree more with pickled's breakdown of the Scout and what won't work.

Personally, I don't want a shotgun... I don't want the Empires scout heading in the direction of the TF2 scout. Period. That said, I think that gearing the Scout for helping squads move up is an interesting thought, but my understanding is that such was partially the intent behind scouts sabotaging turrets and being able to get hide and creep behind enemy lines. I don't think that trying to gear it for uber close combat competitiveness is the best use of the scout's unique loadouts.

Luckily, sabotage is back to its original state, which means it's useful without being overpowered. Some players may not have liked this revert, but I was a proponent of it.

Smoke grenades are more often used for griefing than for anything useful - I suggest they be discarded from the game altogether.

We all know the scout rifle is pretty worthless, especially relative to its 2.12 predecessor. I don't think we want an AWP, but I wouldn't mind if it was more like the scout rifle in CS:S, and I don't think that would be overpowered, either.

It would be nice if the binoculars could actually help you see buildings/vehicles/players beyond the draw distance that you have when you're viewing the world without binoculars - essentially, it would be nice if they let you see further than you can already see without them. As it stands, they only provide you with a larger and clearer view of what you can already see. That may be beyond the scope of this thread, however.

 

given unlimited access to resources, I would:

have at least 2 new weapons modeled and animated for the scout so that weapon changes did not affect scouts and engineers uniformly. Possible ideas include, but are not limited to, a new smg and a short-barreled carbine (in the real-life sense, not the empires sense) with a 2x zoom or red-dot scope. These new weapons would emphasize flexibility and mobility and would increase the scout's combat capability relative to especially the engineer.

fix the scout rifle, not remove it. it would kill in 1 headshot or 2 bodyshots, except for riflemen, unless riflemen resists were lowered (which I would do as well if I could). However, glitches and exploits with the scout rifle would be removed as well.

change the hide skill from only working when you're crouched or prone and doing nothing to having a charge bar that gradually fills as you are hidden, and can be used on the run. this is primarily to emphasize a new mobility role for the scout. after all, hide in its current incarnation basically mandates that in order to be used, the scout has to camp.

change the "enhanced senses" skill to turn the scout into a camera that shares targets with his team.

change the "radar stealth" skill by adding complete ML turret immunity to its ability to stay undetected by radars. ML turrets would be unable to track scouts in vehicles. If you think this is overpowered, think of engineers with their ability to be a repair pad wherever they go and grenadiers with their ability to negate mines with defusal.

remove "weapon silencer."

improve the scout's natural ability to regenerate stamina to something that could actually be noticed during the course of regular gameplay. additionally, enhance the squad aura (it is virtually useless right now).

replace "recon" squad power with "sprint" squad power (since the new enhanced senses would remove the usefulness of recon), which would simply be something like a 20-30% speed boost for however long seems to be a good duration, at the cost of 3 points.

render scouts immune to the effects of concussions. (could be overpowered, but worth trying) Alternatively, increase the radius and duration of concussions, particularly against turrets. alternatively or additionally, add a damage over time effect to concussions when they are used on turrets.

remove smokes.

change sabotage back to dealing only a tiny amount of damage over time.

add some sort of targeting mechanism to binoculars, so that stuff (particularly vehicles) that has been spotted receives extra damage from stuff.

allow the binoculars to create a sight picture that can be used by grenadiers with artillery feedback for a set duration like 60-100 seconds.

I don't take credit for all of these things. Most of them were thought of by others. I just think this package is a cohesive unit that makes sense to me and would fit empires gameplay, giving the scout flexibility and the ability to fill several roles. but as mashav has discovered, most of these threads are just a waste of time, since we've had like a dozen of these already and nothing ever gets changed. I'm waiting for torrents to finish though and I'm not doing anything else right now so I thought I would throw away a little bit of my time, what the hell?

 

other than adding new weapons (which I think is very important to the future of the scout) nothing I listed requires new art. I feel as though this request is no less inappropriate than everyone and their mom requesting that the scout get a shotgun.